BP #8 Revised

This past Wednesday, AT&T and Johnson & Johnson, among a few of the largest advertisers in the United States were apart of several other companies that have said they will stop playing their ads on YouTube and other Google properties in turn of some of the ads appearing next to offensive material such as hate speech. Google has rebounded saying that they’re trying their best, but it is a tough feat when there is so many hours of material being downloaded to the YouTube site every minute and the software to check for offensive material such as terrorism is not perfect. Still advertisers believe it is outrageous and not good enough as they don’t want their material to be associated with negativity in any type of way. While AT&T and Johnson & Johnson were the first to make their decisions on the subject, other companies such as Verizon seem like they may be headed in the same direction.

Consequentialism says acts are just, because they maximize the amount of goodness in the world and whether the action produces the greatest net balance of benefits. As of now Google is having a hard time in finding the good into what’s is currently going on with the advertising and its brand, but they are trying hard to find a solution to their problems and again find that balance of benefits.

Google has to attempt to find what is intrinsically good and bad and determine what should be the call to action. Small businesses to large ones such as ones stated above believe it is their duty to stay true to what they believe in, in what is ethical and not. McFall states that to have integrity, there must a level of coherence and moral beliefs. Those are to stay moral with their commitments, stay consistent with their beliefs and actions, and to always act for the right reason even in the face of temptation.

These companies did not want to be associated with any type of hate crime within the Google properties. They made the decision to make the right action and stop their advertising until further notice because there was no intrinsically good evidence.

While the pullback of advertising does take a blow to Google itself, it is unsure if it will take a much of a blow in the future towards the vast ad business. Google hopes to get the problem fixed immediately so advertising can be continued and hate crime on their servers will be minimized.